1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic capacitor and a method of manufacturing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A multilayer ceramic capacitor, a multilayer chip electronic component, is a chip-type condenser mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB) of various electronic products such as imaging devices (or video display devices) like liquid crystal displays (LCDs), plasma display panels (PDPs), and the like, computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular phones, and the like, to charge and discharge electricity.
A multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC), having advantages such as compactness, high capacitance, and ease of mountability, may be used as a component of various electronic devices.
Also, in the MLCC, internal electrodes are printed on individual ceramic sheets so as to be smaller than the ceramic sheets and have a predetermined thickness. When the ceramic sheets having the internal electrodes printed thereon are stacked, steps are inevitably generated between marginal portions in which no internal electrodes are formed and dielectric layers on which the internal electrodes are formed.
Such steps may be severe in the outermost portions of the internal electrodes.
Due to the steps, in a case in which a thermal shock is applied or stress resulting from warpage of a printed circuit board (PCB) having the MLCC mounted thereon is applied, portions of the dielectric layers may be delaminated or cracks may be generated.
Then, moisture, other foreign objects, or the like, may infiltrate into exposed portions of the internal electrodes due to the delamination or cracks, to thereby degrade insulation resistance, reliability, or the like.
Patent document 1 discloses an MLCC, but fails to disclose a limitation in numerical values regarding a ratio between a ceramic body and an active layer and a ratio between a thickness of a lower cover layer and a distance from an end of the lowermost internal electrode in a length direction to an end of a band portion of an external electrode close thereto.